Verizon needs to be accountable

I opened my latest Verizon bill this morning and read it will raise the base montly rate by $8 in the next 30 days! I emailed state politicians, the FCC, the New Jersey board of public utilities. Are others as upset as I am? Eight dollars a month is a HUGE increase and just not right. I know Verizon on the FiOS side is niot regulated by the board of public utilities, but this is so, so wrong.

At 26 cents per day, I am not outraged. However, threaten to switch carriers or/and sign a new contract for two years and they will likely offer a better deal. I do not think government (FCC, Senators etc) will lose sleep over $0.26 per day.

Lanky,

Why do you think it's unequivocally O.K. for Verizon to raise its rates substantially just because it can? For me, it's a very large percentage because I worked extremely hard two years ago getting the price I have. Verizon desperately wants to switch all (or as many as it can) of its copper customers to fiber optics and therefore have free reign to do whatever the h*%# it wants.

If you have no problem with a 25 cents a day slippery slope, then so be it. Obviously, I disagree.

When was the last time they raised rates? I imagine their cost of business has increased just like most everyone's

Frame the issue more as almost $100 per year.

What services do you have?

Is that for the landline, cable TV, cell phones, or Internet?

Offer to switch to fios if they give you a lifetime (or till you move) price guarantee. My neighbor pays about half what I do for fios - all so they could be free of one more copper customer.

Maplewoodite said:
I opened my latest Verizon bill this morning and read it will raise the base montly rate by $8 in the next 30 days! I emailed state politicians, the FCC, the New Jersey board of public utilities. Are others as upset as I am? Eight dollars a month is a HUGE increase and just not right. I know Verizon on the FiOS side is niot regulated by the board of public utilities, but this is so, so wrong.

My Verizon bill is about $130 per month and has stayed about the same for the last 6/7 years. Don't think I could muster much outrage over an $8 increase. Not sure if that's good or bad.

My guess is that OP only has phone service and likely pays around $40 per month. So even though $8 per month is a fairly nominal amount for most of us, as a percentage increase, it is significant.

My earlier point was to explore other options (fios, xfinity, etc). Unfortunately if you want to remain on the old copper wires, you will see increases. Maintaining the copper network is not cheap and those costs will continue to be spread over increasingly fewer customers as more switch to fiber.

Interesting...

"It's not just the wires that are going bad, it's the switches," said Sherry Lichtenberg, the principal researcher for telecommunications at the Washington-based National Regulatory Research Institute.

AT&T officials have said the company sometimes has to scrounge on eBay for parts.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/bs-bz-cutting-landlines-20150131-story.html#page=1

Copper is gradually going away, and it's best to accept that and get on with alternatives. We had FIOS in West Orange and loved it, but that isn't available where we live in CT now. So we cut our home phone altogether. It was a long time coming, but we were paying an absurd amount for a phone we never used and which only took calls from telemarketers. Why bother maintaining that and absorbing increased costs associated with it???

So our new house has no "home phone," and we are shifting entirely to our cell phones. So far, it's good. We haven't noticed any difference, apart from NOT getting any calls from people who want to sell us stuff we don't want. That's a net gain, IMO.

I assume the day will come when telemarketers have access to our cell phones, too, and on that day I will cry. Until then, I'm enjoying the freedom.

PeggyC said:
Copper is gradually going away, and it's best to accept that and get on with alternatives. We had FIOS in West Orange and loved it, but that isn't available where we live in CT now. So we cut our home phone altogether. It was a long time coming, but we were paying an absurd amount for a phone we never used and which only took calls from telemarketers. Why bother maintaining that and absorbing increased costs associated with it???
So our new house has no "home phone," and we are shifting entirely to our cell phones. So far, it's good. We haven't noticed any difference, apart from NOT getting any calls from people who want to sell us stuff we don't want. That's a net gain, IMO.
I assume the day will come when telemarketers have access to our cell phones, too, and on that day I will cry. Until then, I'm enjoying the freedom.

When we lived in Brooklyn, we had tons of problems with our land line phones. Particularly when we had a lot of rain, the phones would either go out, or there would be static on the line. The Verizon workers told me that the copper lines were all decaying, and that there were no plans to replace them, since it was extremely expensive and the world was heading towards cellular. They were basically just patching the lines to keep them sort of working.

We actually switched to all cell a few years back. We stayed with Verizon, so we were able to keep our old numbers. We do have one "land line" for business purposes, but it is actually a digital box, which you plug into the wall and into your regular phone. It only costs $20 a month, and you just plug it in wherever you go, so you keep the same phone number.

Robert_Casotto said:
CUT THE CORD.

If you're poor and you have difficulty paying for service, cutting the cord is not an option.

The three cut the cord options are no service, cell or internet based phones. Cell service usually costs. Maybe basic one phone consumer cellular is cheaper. Internet phones certainly cost more when you include the price of the needed internet service.

Not necessarily true. For instance, xfinity could replace verizon (with fiber) for phone only at about $30 per month with no need to bundle or get internet.

My only non-copper concern is that copper is the only conduit that still works with no power. So when the zombie apocalypse comes, I won't be able to call grandma...

BG9 said:

Robert_Casotto said:
CUT THE CORD.

If you're poor and you have difficulty paying for service, cutting the cord is not an option.
The three cut the cord options are no service, cell or internet based phones. Cell service usually costs. Maybe basic one phone consumer cellular is cheaper. Internet phones certainly cost more when you include the price of the needed internet service.

BG9 said:

Robert_Casotto said:
CUT THE CORD.

If you're poor and you have difficulty paying for service, cutting the cord is not an option.
The three cut the cord options are no service, cell or internet based phones. Cell service usually costs. Maybe basic one phone consumer cellular is cheaper. Internet phones certainly cost more when you include the price of the needed internet service.

Granted, but none of that was presented as issues for the OP.

lanky said:
Not necessarily true. For instance, xfinity could replace verizon (with fiber) for phone only at about $30 per month with no need to bundle or get internet.
My only non-copper concern is that copper is the only conduit that still works with no power. So when the zombie apocalypse comes, I won't be able to call grandma...

BG9 said:

Robert_Casotto said:
CUT THE CORD.

If you're poor and you have difficulty paying for service, cutting the cord is not an option.
The three cut the cord options are no service, cell or internet based phones. Cell service usually costs. Maybe basic one phone consumer cellular is cheaper. Internet phones certainly cost more when you include the price of the needed internet service.

Or if it rains lightly for more than an hour and grandma lives in south orange.

there are many cheap wireless options some are subsidized for those in need to make cutting the cord an option ( ie consumer cellular) only difference is land line is unlimited use and cellular is metered usage ( when on network- but savvy users connect to free wifi hot spots and use viber etc to talk for free) so if someone in need (aka poor) talks allot from home with no internet they are stuck but if they need phone for basic communications the pre-paid or subsidized are out there

I don't believe this to be true - I believe there are many service providers who will install fiber for phone only with likely no installation fee for new service.

new207040 said:
so if someone in need (aka poor) talks allot from home with no internet they are stuck

lanky you are correct - there is also subsidized internet driven allot from the need to ensure all kids have access to computers and supporting networks for after school homework etc.

PeggyC said:
Copper is gradually going away, and it's best to accept that and get on with alternatives. We had FIOS in West Orange and loved it, but that isn't available where we live in CT now. So we cut our home phone altogether. It was a long time coming, but we were paying an absurd amount for a phone we never used and which only took calls from telemarketers. Why bother maintaining that and absorbing increased costs associated with it???
So our new house has no "home phone," and we are shifting entirely to our cell phones. So far, it's good. We haven't noticed any difference, apart from NOT getting any calls from people who want to sell us stuff we don't want. That's a net gain, IMO.
I assume the day will come when telemarketers have access to our cell phones, too, and on that day I will cry. Until then, I'm enjoying the freedom.

I get telemarketing calls on my cell phone now.

Verizon owes you nothing. Negotiate, pay up or leave. But they absolutely should have the right to price their service as they please since there are other options.

The diversion about copper is funny. I wasn't clear in my comments. We do not have copper--we did. After a month of our landline phone service being out and receiving no help from Verizon (again, the company no longer supports copper at all), we had no choice if we wanted to stay connected. After negotiating with Verizon, we switched to FiOS, having been promised many, many things related to the rate.

You're not correct that there are many choices. I would love to have AT&T for Internet/phone, for example, but that's not an option in my area. To say Verizon has the right to price the service however it wants is, I feel, not true.

We live in a country that regulates commodity consumer services, and although telecommunications has become such a fluid space, that regulation needs to stay intact. That's my opinion.

Besides, does anyone else really feel Verizon should not be answerable to any government regulations? If we all just respond, well, O.K., when Verizon hits us with another increase then it will happen again and again.

From what I can gather from your 2nd post your 2 year contract is up and now the rates are higher, is that right?

You can go with what ever cable company is in your area or you can go VOIP since you appear to have internet access. So there are lots of choices.

Or you can get on the phone and negotiate with Verizon. For a new contract term they will likely make concessions.

But no the price of phone service should not be set by government. Anymore than the price of toothpaste should be.

No two-year contract.

I do not get the analogy to the price of toothpaste, at all.

He's saying that if you don't like Crest (Verizon) you should switch to Colgate(Comcast).

Maplewoodite said:
No two-year contract.
I do not get the analogy to the price of toothpaste, at all.

So, you're not locked into a price, and you're annoyed that they raised it on you? Is there something we're missing?

I for some reason actually looked at the letter they sent about signing a new two year deal to avoid a rate hike (I am not being sarcastic and saying you should have read your mail; I'm saying mail from Verizon is always, always, always junk mail, usually of the "here's another stupid privacy notice" variety, and it's a miracle I caught this one). Anyway, I must've done it on exactly the right day because I managed to cut my double play bill by $15 when I did it, as there was some sort of special for exactly the package I already had.

I know this doesn't help you, sorry. What's your opposition to a new 2-year deal, though? If it's that you want the freedom to change without penalty (my alternative here is Comcast, which I was so happy to ditch for DirecTV in 1997 that I made an apartment balcony antenna stand for the dish out of an aluminum poll and a 5 gallon bucket filled with concrete so I could get the dish up above the roofline, or back to DirecTV itself, which, no), just explore that option NOW and tell your local cable provider you're thinking of switching if they give you a good enough deal. Though it may also be too late to sign a new contract even if you do want to.